Jan Beatty

Jan Beatty’s books include Red Sugar, Boneshaker, Mad River, The Switching/Yard, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, and her memoir, American Bastard. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies published by Autumn House Press, Coffee House Press, Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, Kent State University Press, and the University of Iowa Press. Her essays on writing have appeared in anthologies by Autumn House Press, Creative Nonfiction, and The State University of New York Press. What would it take to be home in one’s body, to walk around the world as oneself, knowing the pain within and without us? In The Body Wars (University of Pittsburgh Press) Jan Beatty boldly answers by making a fire map of the body. These roiling poems smack into walls of meditation, only to slide down the smooth concrete into the flatline of joy. These are vital poems of dimension, of both psychic and literal travel, of the elasticity of truth and struggle, of the daily nature of desire that brings us to our knees—then shotguns us back to the heart’s center. Tracy K. Smith, United States Poet Laureate and author of Words in the Water, wrote that “Jan Beatty’s visceral urgency and courageous truth-telling is a gust of welcome fresh air. These poems are astoundingly alive!”